Imagine, if you will, that you are a longtime fan of the Baltimore Orioles, and that your baseball outlook for 2012 included the following:

A young center fielder with speed and power who was No. 2 in the MVP voting a year ago.

A perennial MVP candidate at first base who has missed eight games in five seasons and had an OPS of .957 last year.

A left fielder with a career 162-game average of 51 steals, 191 hits, 13 triples and 99 runs.

A second baseman three years removed from an MVP award.

A third baseman who was in the top six in MVP voting in 2008 and 2009.

A DH who is coming off seasons of 28, 32 and 29 home runs.

A No. 1 starter who had an ERA of 2.89 last year and is a former ALCS and World Series MVP.

A No. 2 starter whose average season since hitting the bigs full time is 16-8 with a 3.32 ERA and 196 strikeouts.

A No. 3 starter who had a 2.33 ERA and 17 wins in 2010.

A No. 4 starter who brings a 2.88 ERA and strikeout-an-inning pace as a reliever to the rotation.

Two candidates to close, both who were closers in 2010 and who combined for 44 saves in 51 opportunities.

A bench full of guys who have been starters in other cities.

And of the entire bunch, only one (the venerable DH) will be older than 32 on Opening Day.

As an Orioles fan, a beaten, doomed soul who'd been forced to watch two decades of terrible teams, you'd be beside yourself with joy. You'd have stocked up on team apparel, painted your car orange and black, re-named your pets after the stars and slept the sweet sleep of the contented.

But if you're a Red Sox fan, fat from years of success, what do you do?

Of course, you complain that you didn't make any moves, that the front office is too cheap, that you're weak at shortstop, that the manager is a joke and the team is barely even worth following, because what's the point — they're gonna ruin our summah!

Yep.

I guess it's an annual thing now, here in Titletown/Entitled-town U.S.A. When the Bruins go through a patch of mediocre, they're "fading"; when the Patriots lose the Super Bowl, they're "average"; when the Celtics have their first .500 stretch in five years they're "heartless" and the Red Sox ... well, no one's quite as spoiled as Red Sox fans.

I should be used to the simplistic math of Red Sox Nation as a hive mind: Third place in the AL East, minus Jonathan Papelbon = worse in 2012.

I don't even think the disastrous end to 2011, and all the fallout that came later, really has much to do with the opinion that the sky is falling. It didn't help, but the quiet, measured offseason — building in small ways after the two huge acquisitions of Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford — is what really seems to get everyone going. The fact that the team's payroll is enormous and that there's an obvious pennant contender under contract doesn't seem to make a dent. Or a Bucky Dent. It's as if the past decade didn't even happen, and the Curse of the Bambino is still going strong.

Of course, these are the same people that think Bill Belichick isn't drafting well any more (by any rational measure, he's the best in the business) or that the Celtics should fire Doc Rivers (they shouldn't).

It's just the way we are — or at least, the way the vocal minority is.

So, in the interest of calming everyone's nerves, more soothing factoids:

The Red Sox are 8-to-1 to win the World Series, 4-to-1 to win the American League. Only the Yankees and Phillies are shorter money to bring home the big trophies.

They've averaged 93.2 wins a season over the last decade, and are projected by the baseball stat guys to win 92-94 games this year. In the last 10 years, 39 teams have won 92+ games, and 35 of them have made the playoffs — and that's without the possible fifth playoff team that MLB is working on as we speak.

Players almost always regress back (or up) to an orderly career arc, and guys like Kevin Youkilis, Carl Crawford, new reliever Andrew Bailey, outfielder Cody Ross and infielder Mike Aviles are all due to move back up toward norms. Only Jacoby Ellsbury was significantly ahead of his expected numbers in 2011.

Manager Bobby Valentine orchestrated a 24-win increase in his first full season in Texas, and a 17-game jump in his first full season with the Mets.

Does any of it guarantee a World Series? Of course not. But jumping off the bandwagon in February is beyond ridiculous.

Guess that's why "fan" is short for "fanatic."

Jonathan Comey is sports and features editor for The Standard-Times. Email him at jcomey@s-t.com